Open Mike Night – Time to go to the Movies

by Mike M and Mike W (AKA blackmore and havok3595)

Spader-Man, Spader-Man
Does whatever a Spader can
Plays a lawyer, not a clerk.
Hangs around with... Captain Kirk.

Hey there, there goes the Spader-Man...

Thanks to HouseT for the lyrics!

We love a good comic book movie. Nothing better than being overcharged for a gigantic tub of popcorn, a big ass jug of soda, and tickets to watch our favorite guys in spandex kick the crap out of some other guys in spandex. This year's fanboy treats include V For Vendetta, X3, and Superman Returns, which have already received their typical buzz from the fans, who have been pretty inconsistent about how they feel about these films. It goes something like this:

COMIC MOVIES – A FAN TIMELINE

Stage 1: Movie is announced - People are skeptical, but excited. Many are looking for every rumor to come out of the studio, as they are determined to spoil the movie as soon and as much as possible.

Stage 2: Internet rumors surface - Harry Knowles and his ilk have done everything possible to ruin the movie industry. They claim to be fans, but all they want to do is complain about every movie. They claim to have “inside" sources and make up rumors, which the internet public buys into. People start declaring this movie as "THE END OF THE WORLD." Shame we can’t get THE END OF AICN.

Stage 3: A Teaser/Trailer is released - As soon as the first images are released from the movie, people's attitudes change immediately. Suddenly, "THIS MOVIE IS GOING TO CHANGE MY LIFE!! I've never had any doubts." X3 and Fantastic Four are great examples of this.

Stage 4: Release – If the movie is good, most people will like it, but no matter what you will find a few to say that it sucked and completely ruined the character forever. See, on the internet, you can get a lot of attention by being a hater. No one cares about the millions and millions of people who loved Spider-Man, but by declaring how terrible it was, you instantly will get noticed.

ad•ap•ta•tion - n. Composition that has been recast into a new form

Here's a harsh reality check: Movie studios are not making comic movies for the 250,000 or so people who read comics. Even if all of these people brought a friend that would land them with an overwhelming box office gross of…let's see, 500,000 people times an average ticket price of $6.41 according to the National Association of Theater Owners…$3,205,000 dollars. Not a bad chunk of change by itself, but according to IMDB, Spider-Man 2 had an estimated budget of $200,000,000. Unless these people plan on seeing Spider-Man 2 63 times each, the movie is going to be losing the studio a lot of money. As you can imagine, that is probably not what Sony intended when they bought the movie rights.

Besides, these are adaptations. If you want an exact translation, for the next movie, how about they just give you still panels with word bubbles for the next hour and a half…and then they can keep interrupting the movie with annoying ads that completely take you out of the movie when you try to figure out exactly why that person's eyelids are sewed shut and what that has to do with buying a Volvo.

Granted, these movies should hold onto at least some of the core of the character. Good examples of this would be Catwoman and Constantine. There is nothing at all recognizable about these characters. On the other hand, I thought League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, while having just about nothing to do with the comic, was still a pretty fun summer popcorn movie.

- Comics changing to match the movies isn't always that bad a thing. These books should be much more accessible.

When the first X-Men movie came out, X-continuity was a crazy, crazy mess. Some people who watched the movie decided to give a few books a try, and the voices of hundreds of people simultaneously saying "WTF" were heard around the world. The books were mired in convoluted and ill-explained subplots, and it was not uncommon to pick up a book and not find more than 2-3 recognizable (by non-comic readers or those who hadn't read in a while) characters. Marvel said at the time that they missed a tremendous opportunity there because they got a brief sales spike which quickly went back down to normal levels as everyone bought the comic and couldn't make heads or tails of it.

The companies need to grab those additional customers and hold them. If it means sexing Toad up a little, then by all means sex him up. If it means organic webshooters, then give Spidey some organic webshooters. The super science of the original webshooters were fine in the 60's, when pulp fiction had long established that people invented crazy things in their basements every Tuesday. The "toady" Toad was perfect for a 60's comic...the Igor-type subordinate who exists mostly to show us just how much of a jerk his master is. In today's world, these things are a much tougher sell. As fans get older and some people get out of the hobby, the companies need to sink their hooks into new customers, and trying to sell them stuff they don't want to buy is not the way to do that.

As we said earlier, the movies are trying to appeal to a lot more than just comic fans. Going back to our trusty calculator, Spider-Man 2 grossed $373,377,893 in America. That means around 58 million people saw this movie. And that is not taking into account people who snuck into see the movie, people who downloaded the movie, massive DVD sales, not to mention that Spider-Man 2 has been shown constantly on HBO lately.

If even 1% of these 58 million had a mild interest in checking out comics, that would be 580,000 people, which is more than double the number who read comics now. If we want the comic industry to survive, we need those readers. If it comes at the expense of a few purists who were going to whine about these comics anyway, SCREW THEM!

- They can not possibly capture 40 years of inconsistent comic continuity in 90 minutes of film…nor should they try.

Alright, so when Spider-Man came out, we had some people saying "But that's not how it happened! He fought Chameleon and tried to join the FF, fought Sandman, Mysterio, Doc Ock, and a zillion others before Green Goblin ever took the stage. And no Gwen? She was there way before MJ." Well, then he got rebooted a few times, and so on and so forth. The retcon monster stomped around a few times altering some early stories, and other things happened. Be that as it may, some people still wanted it in the original order.

Recent Best Picture nominee Brokeback Mountain was based on a two page story. Two pages, that's it. These two pages filled a couple hours worth of movie. That shows an example of how the page-to-film scale works. If you directly adapted Spider-Man comics to film, the first film wouldn't even get past Amazing #1. And let's face it: Chameleon is not going to put asses in seats.

Origins need to be streamlined, and a movie needs to get to "people punching each other," ASAP. That's what makes a successful movie. Introduce character, have him hit on a girl, have him punch someone, have him kiss the girl, have him punch someone else (hopefully not the girl). I like some parts of books that never made it into movies (like the Old Forest in Fellowship of the Rings), but I understand that the flow of a book is different from the flow of a movie, and the flow of a comic is something else entirely.

On that same “page,” what about the casting?

I am sorry to say that you are never going to find the PERFECT person for any comic role. Daredevil was a great example of this. The internet has told us that Ben Affleck is a lousy actor, and Michael Clarke Duncan could never be the Kingpin because of pigmentation problems. But, while the movie did have its problems, just about none of them can be traced to Affleck or Duncan. They played their roles just about perfectly.

In fact, the weakest link acting-wise turned out to be Jennifer Garner, but of course, she is a darling of the internet download crowd, so no one really commented on that, until she screwed up the role a second time in the Electra movie. The fact she got a second chance bewilders me.

And for Punisher, we heard the absurd comment that Thomas Jane didn't have black hair in an early test shot of him. A picture that came out months before shooting actually had started. Because there is no such thing as hair dye!

Summing it all up

Essentially, the problem here is exactly this: people want something to complain about. If a product isn't tailored for them precisely, then it sucks. In the case of comic movies, there are a number of very good reasons why the movie should be different from the comic, but no one wants to hear those when they can simply criticize with no basis. At least, it looks like people are moving towards being less critical when they receive actual evidence and not internet tomfoolery and supposition. Someday, being unnecessarily critical of a relatively unknown quantity will fall out of fashion...but sadly, today is not that day.


Letters

Very good column this week. Nice to you see you hitting Marvel for all of their stunts.

Most of the points made I agreed with completely. There are way too many events at Marvel now. It's constant and disgusting.

The sell outs are completely meaningless, although DC is way more prone to these.

And there's no doubt about the throwing it at the wall theory from Marvel. I can't believe there's another Excalibur series.

Good stuff as always.

Chris

The sad part is the New Excalibur series has actually been pretty good. Claremont has been a different writer lately, and I am really looking forward to his work on Exiles.

Wow! Another letter!

Nice article, you two. I hope you two aren't going to permanently merge into one being, because I different feelings for you both. Hmm. Does shades of hate count as different feelings? :P

Concerning Austen and Hudlin (and the subsequent dislike generated from their work), one can also point the finger at Quesada again. He is, after all, the person that should be greenlighting the premise if not the content of their work. If nothing else, he could rein them in when they get vocal (and insultng) to criticism of their work.

But to be honest, I've always thought that people like Austen and Hudlin had to have gotten the attitude they seem to have (where sales was all that mattered and complaints were pointless so long as numbers were up) from someone higher up the chain. And since Quesada's at the top of the chain...

If you're not shutting up the employees, you must agree with them. I'm just saying, is all...

HouseT

Personally, I am a first amendment freak, so I feel that the employees should be allowed to say whatever they want. That’s their right, just like it is the fans’ rights to not buy the book of someone who pisses them off.

As for the idea that sales are all that matters, comics are a business, sales will always be the driving force. Saying anything else is just romanticizing the industry.

All right, that wraps it up for this week. Thanks to our resident artist, Patti, for mixing my love of comics with my love of James Spader. On that note....WATCH BOSTON LEGAL!!

Please e-mail me any questions, comments, or whatevers to jackknight@gmail.com. I do read all my e-mails, and I’ll post them with my column. Also, remember to swing by GameFAQs and check out Eisner Cup season 3!

Now, go out and read some comics, you slacker!